← Fame through time1900
1900
Whose working lives fell in 1900. Books are measured from 1800 and readers from 2015, so for this period we can say who lived then, not who was talked about then.
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in 1900, ranked where Wikipedia coverage and readership agree.
- 1
George V16 decades - 2
Warren G. Harding11 decades - 3
Rudyard Kipling13 decades - 4
W. B. Yeats12 decades - 5
Jean Sibelius0 decades - 6
Erich Ludendorff10 decades - 7
Ferdinand I of Romanianot measured- - 8
Edith Cavell11 decades - 9
Suzanne Valadonnot measured- - 10
Benjamin Guggenheimnot measured- - 11
Lala Lajpat Rainot measured- - 12
Alfred Hugenbergnot measured- - 13
Stephen Crane14 decades - 14
Archduke Otto of Austrianot measured- - 15
Friedrich August III of Saxonynot measured- - 16
Philipp Scheidemann11 decades - 17
Gabriel Narutowicznot measured- - 18
Charles G. Dawes11 decades - 19
Sven Hedin13 decades - 20
Emma Orczynot measured- - 21
Abraham Isaac Kooknot measured- - 22
Valentin Serov8 decades - 23
Dmitry Merezhkovskynot measured- - 24
Amélie of Orléansnot measured- - 25
Alexander Glazunov6 decades
How to read these rankings
- People sit in their own time. Everyone is placed in the century their working life belongs to, and never in one that came after their death.
- Attention, not reputation. A place on these lists reflects the attention a person still draws in the public record, read across every language rather than one. It is not a judgement on the life.
- Fame in print. The curves show how often a name appeared in the books of each decade from 1800 to 2019, drawn from the Google Books Ngram corpus. Those decades are closed, so each curve is measured once and kept.
- Gaps are left as gaps. Where the record is too thin to be fair, or a name belongs to more than one notable person, we would rather show nothing than guess.